Decision-making in Army of Two: The 40th Day

If you look beyond the fancy explosions and large-scale destruction tearing through Shanghai, Army of Two: The 40th Day has something to say about morality. The problem is finding it in a convoluted plot that meanders before coming to an abrupt and bizarre stop during the finale. After finishing the game and making my choice, I watched the ending wondered what the hell just happened?

The 40th Day began so innocently as a modern-day survival story. Explosions rip through one of the major cities in the Far East. Rios and Salem have a part in it, and all they want to do is get the hell out of Dodge. The only problem is that there’s an army of mercenaries trolling the streets and shooting anything that moves. All throughout the game, I was too busy in gunfights to actual wonder why this is happening. The only background comes in cursory radio transmissions that I had to collect. After finishing the game, I got a fuzzy outline.

Jonah, the man behind The 40th Day mercenary group, was a military man turned actor turned politician. (This guy is one step away from being the governor of California.) He destroyed Shanghai to prove a point: that people turned to beasts and are immoral during times of desperation. Obviously, this guy is a madman. He is corrupted by power, but his hypothesis could ring true depending on how you played Rios or Salem during your journey.

When I play these morality games, I always trend toward the good side. I feel dirty for acting evil even if it is in a virtual world. When I played the “No Russian” level in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, I had to replay it after massacring civilians. It just didn’t feel right.

In The 40th Day, I assume I was supposed to make these hard decisions. When raiding a weapons locker at an African country’s embassy, a rent-a-cop confronted me. I had a choice: I could either put the weapons back and leave the guy alone or I could take the weapons and knock the guy unconscious. It seems as if there’s a good and bad to this equation, but there isn’t. Nothing is what it seems. Taking the weapons leads that Rios and Salem to unintentionally kill the guy. The game flash-forwards and you see a fatherless son, picking up a gun presumably to take revenge. Leave the guard alone and you’ll see that the man was actually a murderer who took the guise of a guard, gave up the weapons for money and ditched the building.

It turns out that no move is the right move, and the game is filled with these moments as the mercenary duo land in one strange misadventure after another. They could kill a tiger or leave it be. They could stop an ally from forcing himself on a woman or they could stop him. These decisions are never clear cut. The thread running through them is that we never know the people we help. We don’t know if that tiger will stay in its cage or if it will leave and end up devouring an armed robber. We don’t know if that woman who is about to be assaulted is actually a spy who plans to killing a baby.

The way these choices are presented doesn’t really uplift your faith in humanity; rather, it fosters an exhausted cynicism. Toward the end of the game after killing hundreds of mercenaries and seeing my ride out of Shanghai destroyed, I didn’t trust any of these characters who I stumbled upon. I couldn’t believe them, and that’s the mind-set I had when I confronted Jonah. After playing morally and saving hostages and arresting mercenaries, I was presented with this scenario.

I wanted to kill Jonah, but I couldn’t exactly do that because Jonah held the trigger to a nuclear bomb that would go off in the city killing millions. Slaying Jonah would render all my good deeds moot.

The big bad said that he wouldn’t blow up Shanghai if I did one thing: Kill my partner. He said that the city needed one good sacrifice for its salvation. The offer sounded biblical. It’s like God saying to Abraham that he would spare Sodom and Gomarrah if he could find 10 righteous people. It’s a heavy-hearted decision and one I struggled with.

Should I do the immoral thing for the greater good or should I kill him and get some justice at the risk of destroying a city? I thought these two choices over when a third solution came to my mind. I wondered What if he was lying? I mean trying to do the right thing throughout the game led to decisions with poor consequences. How could I believe a crazy man? Actually, strike that. How could I believe a crazy man asking me to kill a partner who I implicitly trust with my life? I could be killing my partner and the whole time Jonah could be bluffing.

When the choice was framed that way, the decision was easy. We ended up shooting Jonah. After gunning him down, my partner asked me, “Do you know what you just did?”

Gieson Cacho

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Great article. I believe the characters name was not Jonas, but Jonah, as in Jonah from the Bible, who had to save a city within 40 days.

Gieson Cacho

Appreciate the heads up.

branmandola

did the exsact same thing you did. as much as i love these good or evil choice making games i always pick good, just feels wired if i dont.

gsaasg

i like being evil im getting tired of playing the goodguy almost in every game you be the goodguy so i chosed the evil choice

the ricktor scale

I don’t know wether my actions are good or bad. I usually do anything for the cash, but not the bullets. You want to save the boy in the hospital, though. It’s a good payout, and he gets a little merc revenge.

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